Page 82 - Abilene Living

Abilene. The Junior program extends to multiple schools and centers throughout the city.

“We meet once a week during the school year,” McCor-mick said. “The whole point of the Junior Master Gardener program is to teach children and incorporate math, science and leadership skills.”

At the Nelson Boys and Girls Club, they plant a fall gar-den and a spring garden including fowers, trees and herbs that the children sell at the local farmers market.

“I’m an accountant, so I like to teach them the economic part of things,” O’Shields explained. It’s pretty neat to teach them to raise a product, pick it, take it to market and sell it. They also get to walk around and talk to the other farmers and buy their products…What we hope [is] that kids right now can develop that love for gardening or love for plants and will take it with them the rest of their lives.”

The program extends to the classroom as an after school program at multiple schools in the area, including a garden put in at Clack Middle School in May of this year. One of the earlier school gardens began through the help of a grant from the Abilene Education Foundation.

“We started the garden at Johnston,” said three year Master Gardener Jean Dotson. “I really wanted to have an op-portunity for my kids to be able to get into the soil. The goal with the grant was to attract hummingbirds and butterfies to our school. For the last two years, monarchs have stopped at our school and laid eggs right on the milkweed. We dig up a plant and bring it into the classroom, and we watch all the caterpillars go through the life cycle. ”

Dotson teaches at Johnston Elementary where they have an after school garden and science club. The Junior program, free seminars, work days at the extension offce demonstration beds and the Abilene Zoo maintaining gardens are just some of the ways the gardeners join together and bring education to each other and the community.

“The wonderful thing about it is the camaraderie,” Dotson told. “You are an extension of the extension agent. You are helping the extension agents get the word out. That’s what I do with the Junior Master Gardeners, but also all these Master Gardeners have become my comrades. When we get totally overwhelmed we call a work day and all these people show up. That’s the wonderful thing, the fellowship with like-mind-ed people and they are all diverse but we have a common love for plants.” U ALM